pluvia33's Blog

So after having some friends over we decided that it would be cool to have a weekly anime night. We want to watch shows that none of the five of us have ever seen if possible and for the most part do recent shows. So I've gone through all of the recent shows from the past 1-2 years and noted just about every one that my wife and I have not yet seen (which is most of them) and eliminated ones that didn't seem interesting at all so that the list isn't too crazy big. I also went thought my On-Hold and Plan to Watch lists on here to get a few more, but they're still mostly recent shows from the past 5 years or so.

Anyway, so here is a massive list of shows that are under consideration to be shown with our little group. This list is for the other three people in our group. Go through it and let me know what shows you have seen and how much. If you have seen an ENTIRE series, the show will be eliminated from the list and will not be under consideration, unless it is only one person and that person really really really wants to re-watch the series and thinks very highly of it. There is one such show on this list for me which I've been itching to see again now that I have the Blu-rays for it.

If there are shows that you have seen some of, but not the entire series, that does not automatically eliminate the series from consideration. If you've only seen a few episodes for whatever reason but would be willing to watch more of it, there is no reason to mention it in your response. But if you've seen a few episodes and dropped it because you just hated what you saw so far, please speak up and it may be removed from consideration.

One last thing, if there is anything that is not on this list and it is not on my list as Completed and you are interested in watching it during Anime Night, let me know and it will be put under consideration.

I’m getting older and getting married so it’s about time to get rid of these perverted things that don’t involve both me and my fiancée. So it’s time to try to sell a whole mess of hentai in the hopes to try to get a little bit of extra money to help cover wedding expenses and living costs (as well as some new non-hentai anime). So I have a great big load of hentai DVD’s as well as a few H-manga, doujinshi and a couple of H-games to sell to any interested party. These will all be sold one-on-one, communicating via email or forum message, and sold on a first come bases. All items are used, but in good condition unless otherwise noted....

Edit - 29 Jan 2015:

Today I received an email about someone who still wanted to buy some of my hentai and realized that I never updated this.... Well, I sold more and more of my stuff since the original post and then I realized that there was an adult only section of eBay and sold everything that was left. Yeah, so it's all gone! Sorry for the guy who contacted me and anyone else who thought stuff was still available, but thank you to everyone who bought stuff from me! Here is the final list of all of the stuff I sold....

Seven months ago I talked about being mad at Tokyopop. Well, recently it was announced that Tokyopop has ended their North American manga publishing business. And yeah, this sucks. I mean, as I said in my previous post Tokyopop has pissed me off before by discontinuing four different series that I was following from them. But they were pioneers in the US manga market and released the first two manga series I ever read: Love Hina and Chobits. Love Hina remains to this day one of my most beloved series. And yeah, aside from the cancelations, they have pissed me off in other ways. What they did to their release of GTO was horrendous. And they spread themselves way too thin at one point, licensing just about everything they could get a hold of regardless of quality or popularity (sales potential) and releasing too much OEL (Original English Language) and Korean manga that many people (including myself) just weren’t interested in. I just thought that was dumb business planning.

But anyway, now they’re gone and with that my list of titles left incomplete from them increases to 6 with the addition of Deadman Wonderland and Future Diary (which only had two volumes left to be finished!!). There was also Qwaser of Stigmata, but I actually decided to give up on that series with only one volume before this news, so that doesn’t count. So yeah, this really sucks. And it’s really sad that I actually predicted such a thing in my old post: “Who knows if Tokyopop will even last as a company?” Yeah, oh, and look, I also mentioned Del Rey in that entry. You know what? They ended too! Although their situation isn’t quite as grave since Kodansha USA took over most of their titles. Moyashimon and Nodame are still MIA, but most of the other titles I haven’t finished with Del Rey are continuing. But man, all this uncertainty sucks. The article about Tokyopop also says, “Tokyopop will announce the future of specific titles and other releases in the coming weeks.” But again, who knows.

I’m just going to say it again. You just don’t know with manga in the US. Is it really even worth it anymore? Just the uncertainty of it all. “Oh wow, this series looks really interesting! I hope the company releasing it doesn’t close up or just drop it because it wasn’t making enough money!” I mean, yeah, similar things happen in Japan. If a series isn’t popular enough, it might get cut. But you know what? The difference is that in Japan, in most cases, the editors are like, “Hey man, sorry but we have to cut your series. Can you work on ending it?” The ending might be a little rushed if the creator had a more grand idea for the series, but hey, at least it ended. Unlike here when it’s like, “Hey guys, this series just isn’t selling as well as we hoped. We’re going to have to cut it. Volume 6 is going to be our last release.” And the series is just cut off right there! And you know that there is more of the story out there and you have to deal with the fact that you may never have it on your shelf in English. I’m glad I didn’t decide to pick up the Aqua/Aria series from Tokyopop like I mentioned before. I’d only have half of Aria’s 12 volume run in English. Maybe if I ever get around to it I’ll read scanlations and buy it in Japanese if I like it.

So where are we now and what should I do when it comes to manga? Should I just wait for series to finish in English before buying them? Should I just start to say screw it all and not buy any new manga series in English again, ever? Just import my manga from now on and read fan translations until I can read Japanese fluently? But I still love manga and still love the idea of having manga in English. Admittedly, it’s also really cool to have actual Japanese manga on my shelves and in a lot of cases it’s not much more expensive than buying the English counterparts if you know where to shop. But having it in English is good to have for friends who can’t read Japanese or don’t like reading on a computer screen or whatnot. And who do we have now for English manga? We have Viz and probably will always have Viz with Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece taking up 20% of manga shelf space in most stores. They can also usually be trusted to finish their releases. We actually still have Del Rey for a few xxxHolic and a few other things, but for the most part it’s all about Kodansha USA now. They’re sort of brand new so we don’t really know what to expect. If their sales don’t meet expectations, will they just pack up and go home? Hopefully they can be trusted, especially with revivals of titles like Love Hina and Sailor Moon which should bring in good money for them. Maybe they can even rescue some of the titles left unfinished by the Tokyopop closure. But only time can tell. They’ll start releasing their books in May, some of which I have pre-ordered already, so we’ll see then. And of course there is Yen Press. Like I said before, they are pretty much my favorite publisher right now. I’d like them to stay strong as long as possible and I think they’re working smart right now. We’ll just have to see. And yes, there are more US manga publishers like Vertical and Dark Horse which kind of deserve mentioning, but they mostly work on small more underground titles that don’t get as much attention. I have virtually nothing from them on my shelves (got Clover and a few volumes of Megatokyo from Dark Horse and that’s about it from what I remember). Viz, Yen, and Kodansha are pretty much it right now when it comes to high profile titles in the US.

So in the end, I don’t think I’m quite ready to give up on US releases just yet. Getting into manga was one of the big turning points in my Otaku development and without US English releases (particularly Tokyopop for me), I wouldn’t have had that. At least not as soon as it happened. I would hate to take that away from other developing fans. But then again, most developing fans these days probably just read all of their stuff online so it probably doesn’t matter for them. So whatever. We’ll see.

So nearly two months ago I made a post about the (then) upcoming Spring 2011 Anime Line-up. Dez and I are still trying to catch up with last season, but we only have 8 shows left! Comes out to about 86 episodes.... Yeah, that sounds pretty bad, but we can do it!! ^_^

Anyway, I’ve been following The Spring 2011 Anime Preview Guide on ANN and been giving a lot of thought to what we’ll be watching. Here is a new list of shows in priority of how much I want to watch them, followed by a list of the shows that I think we should just skip all together, and then other shows (mostly ones that we might just try to watch at a later time, just not worry about keeping up with them right now). So here we go, another long list!!

1. Hidan no Aria
Still the series I’m looking forward to the most. I just can’t resist a new light novel based series which brings the stars of Toradora! back together. It hasn’t been getting any extremely glowing reviews from the Preview, but it’s worst score is a 2 out of 5, also having a 3 and a 3.5 so that’s not too bad. We’ll see. This is the first of the new shows that I want to watch with our friend Dan.

2. Tiger & Bunny
Now this show has just been getting crazy good reviews in the Preview. For this show, a 3.5 is a low score, not a good score. Most of the reviews have been giving it 4.5 or 5 scores. Two episode reviews brought in a 3.5. And I guess this is actually more of a super hero series than a mecha series (as I called it last time). Show number two to try out with Dan.

3. Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai
Aria may have the stars of Toradora!, but AnoHana actually has the Director and other staff from that wonderful anime! And apparently Tatsuyuki Nagai is in top form as the two reviewers who have checked it out have given AnoHana a 4.5 and a 5 out of 5. Yeah, I might actually want to add this to the shows to watch with Dan, but then again I might be afraid that I’ll eventually cry from it so it might not be a very good idea. ^_^”

4. Deadman Wonderland
Again, I liked what I’ve read of the manga. In addition, it’s been getting good reviews and with Tokyopop shutting down this will probably be the best way for me to get the story now. >_<

5. A Channel
Has gotten reviews in the same range as Aria (a 2.5 and a 3.5), but I still think it should be a fun little series. The third and (so far) final show that we’ll be watching with Dan this season. Maybe we’ll add a fourth show if just three turns out to be a little too light for our weekly get-together.

7. Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko
It’s a SHAFT show and has solid reviews (two 3.5’s and a 4). I don’t need any more encouragement than that. ^_^

8. Hanasaku Iroha
Still think this looks nice and solid reviews from the staff help keep it in my mind.

9. Nichijou
The other major slice-of-life series. This one has been getting larger coverage than A Channel with every reviewer but one chiming in on it. Miraculously, it got nothing but 3’s for the first episode! Three of the reviewers have also checked out episode two. One still gave it a 3, one upped it to a 3.5 and the last to a 4.5. Might be a good replacement for A Channel if it falls flat, or a good candidate for an extra show to watch with Dan if we end up needing one.

10. Sket Dance
Got some pretty solid reviews with mostly 3.5’s so this should turn out nice enough. And it has Kyon’s voice!! ^_^

11. C
Still don’t know much about this series since they haven’t done any reviews on it yet. Looks good though.

12. Ao no Exorcist
Two 3’s and a 4.5 so far. Pretty good for a somewhat generic looking shounen series. We’ll see how it turns out

14. Moshidora
This show still hasn’t aired (set for the 25th) so still no preview. Should be nice though.

15. Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san.
Most of the reviewers thought really highly of this with three 4’s and a 4.5, but for some reason Carlo gave it a 1. Weird. Well, it has half-length episodes so whatever. We’ll check it out and see if we understand why he didn’t like it. He’s probably just weird, though. =P

16. Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera
Like I said before, this is a pretty old story. But some very positive reviews pulled this series out of the “meh” category for me with a 4 and two 4.5’s. It also got a 2.5 from Zac, but he’s typically a bit of a hardass.

17. Hen Zemi (TV)
Here’s one that I missed in my first post. Some pretty low reviews for this one ranging from a 3 all the way down to a 0 (out of everything) from Tim. But it seems kind of interesting and they’re also half-length episodes so might as well try it out.

19. Hyougemono
And last and very much least, his series is teetering very close to the Skip category. I’m just not typically a big fan of historical setting anime and the very average scores of two 2.5’s and a 3.5 really isn’t helping. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll give it a chance. But if we’re pressed for time (which we probably will be) this one might have to go.

Pretty Rhythm: Aurora Dream
Another series I missed when I made the first post. It’s a series about an ice skating show. Might be interesting. Makes me think of Kaleido Star a bit and that was one of my favorite kid-friendly shows ever, so this might be good. I just don’t know if we have room for it. I wish the preview would review it, but there’s nothing.

And that’s it! So 18 or 19 shows to at least try.... Gonna be a little rough. Hopefully we’ll get closer to finishing up the old shows soon. We’re almost done with the stuff we’re watching with Dan at least, so we’ll be able to check out a little bit of new stuff in a couple of weeks at least. Until next time! ^_^

Okay, so I’m a little late with this again, but at least I’m not as late as I was with my 2009 Song List. I didn’t get that one out until October 2010! So yeah, I’m half a year earlier this time! Anyway, again, I watched a good portion of the anime that came out last year and like last year’s list opening, ending and insert theme songs are eligible as long as it played sometime during the year 2010. And again, it’s only one song per show. As last time, it’s a 20 song list with nice little YouTube inserts, although after doing last year’s list and trying to find the videos for this list, I’m really starting to hate YouTube more and more. I had to replace videos 8 times from last year’s list and looking at it now there are 3 videos that aren’t working right now. >_< (don’t know if I’ll bother trying to replace them anymore at this point) And man, some of the videos on this list were hard to find! But anyway, enough of the mini-rant. Here’s the list:

“Let it out” from FMA’s earlier episodes ranked up at number 4 on my 2009 list, but my favorite song from the later episodes ranked much lower. There were still really good songs later in the series, they just didn’t have the same feeling in them that made “Let it out” so powerful. This is still a very nice, enjoyable song, though. It’s actually done by the same group that did “Shoujo S” from Beach (number 10 on the 2009 list). Hey, at least FMA still made it on this year’s list. Bleach wasn’t so lucky. =P

Ahhh, Shiki. Such a crazy little show (still need to finish the last few episodes). The first opening was done by BUCK-TICK, who’s song “Gessekai” from the old anime NightWalker is one of my all time favorite anime songs. They also do a pretty good job here, as well as with the second ending theme in the series.

Wow, it was a major pain in the ass to find a good video of this opening on YouTube. God, I hate YouTube. What I found still isn’t the actual TV opening, but it’s close enough. It’s the full version of the song with the first part of the TV opening, then a bunch of random clips from the show (mostly the introduction clips of each character), then the last part of the TV opening animation at the end. Actually not that bad. Anyway, about the actual song and such.... This is a very fun and happy song from a very funny anime. We really liked it a lot. The opening from the second season will probably be on my 2011 list. ^_^

This song makes me want to just get up and kill some zombies!! And it’s kind of funny that this song has a very similar feel to it as the opening for Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?, a song that will no doubt make it on next year’s list.

Katanagatari is my official favorite series from 2010. I just loved it so much and the way it was presented in double length episodes each month was really cool. I’m actually not sure if this was my favorite song from the series. I think I might have liked one of the ending themes more, but there was a different ending for each of the 12 episodes, so I don’t remember them all that well and finding and listening through all of them would be too much of a chore. But I do really like this song. I thought I’d actually like the second opening more because it’s done by Ali Project, but it didn’t hit me as much as their songs usually do.

The loli vampire series that triggered perhaps my biggest nerd rage ever when it was announced that Funimation was planning on censoring their DVD release of the series. Luckily they ended up changing their mind. But anyway, this is about the music and I really like this song a lot. It’s just nice. I don’t really know what else to say about it.

Yay Nodame! This is such a fun and happy song. It’s nice to have shows that have music as a central theme on this list. Now if only KODANSHA can just start releasing some more of the manga (and Moyashimon while we’re at it), everything will be fine, just fine. ^_^

The first opening from the second season of Index is rather awesome. Maybe my favorite Index/Railgun song yet! But I actually like the bonus song from the “No buts!” single called “SATANIC” even more. Just do damn cool! Makes me think of the Higurashi themes. ^_^

This show actually started in October of 2009 so “Lost Boy” was actually eligible for last year’s list, but I kind of forgot about it. But I really like the song and finally hunted down the mp3 and just love it. Besides, there aren’t that many anime songs sung by guys (total of 4 out of 20 on this list) so we need to represent!

Okay, this is the only song on my list that I actually sought after the full version of the song instead of the actual TV size opening/ending animation version. That’s because I just love the full version of this song and it’s totally epic! They also use various parts of this long 8 minute song at different points of the anime as background music and it’s really cool. For weeks after I got the mp3 I listened to this song every day at the beginning of work, and usually a few extra times throughout the work day.

The last song on the list with a male singer. If it wasn’t for my one song per show limit, Durarara!! would probably have two more songs on the list. It was actually really hard to choose between this and “Complication” (Desirae’s favorite song). But in the end I had to go with the classic “Trust Me” that I loved from the start of watching the series.

This crazy boob show.... The breast milk thing was kind of amusing at first and it was cool to have the voice actresses for Haruhi and Nagato together again in such a weird way, but then the novelty wore off. There was still a pretty amusing show there with the action and the characters, but after the total retard craziness of the last few episodes, I’ve given up on the series. But! One good, lasting thing about the series is that it has some awesome theme songs! The first ending was by far my favorite, thought the second opening “Baptize” is also rather epic.

And finally, finishing off my list for top anime songs of 2010 we have an anime that’s actually about music!! Personally, I thought the second season of K-ON!! was far better than the first, mainly because Mugi became so much more awesome in some very Osaka/Chiyo-chan kinds of ways. But also, the music was better and there was more of it. And “NO, Thank You!” is my favorite of all of the K-ON! songs. A lot of energy and a very good level of rock.

And that’s it! Another year down! I’m hoping for more awesome music coming out of my anime as the years go by, since I’m so totally out of touch with most of the world of music otherwise. Hope you enjoyed reading. Until next year, laters! ^_^

Edit 1: (29 Apr 2011) Well, only one killed video so far. The video for Bakemonogatari's "sugar sweet nightmare" has been replaced.

Edit 2: (16 May 2011) Blah, Bakemonogatari's video got killed again. Replaced!! See how long this one lasts. =P

Okay, so this is a bit of a weird blog post. I'm actually going to rant a little about another person on MAL. I just think they're kind of dumb. Said person goes by the username paganjihadist and he is a 30 year old "regular joe" on MAL. I would call him an anime fan, but he might get offended if I did.

Now, I randomly came across his profile from a thread about anime fans over the age of 25. I thought his comment was interesting (mostly because he was 30) so I checked his profile and saw this line in his "About" section:

i'm very picky about my shows. i also think that 99.99% of all anime is complete garbage.

Now this bothered me. I didn't really care that he called most anime crap. I can deal with that. Everyone has their own tastes. Whatever. What I did have a problem with was the percentage he gave. I ended up writing this on his profile:

Okay, I'm sorry to nit-pick and take things literally here, but you said you "think that 99.99% of all anime is complete garbage" in your profile. Do you realize what that percentage is?? According to the Encyclopedia on Anime News Network, there are 12329 anime in existence right now. Sure, there might be a few things that aren't in the Encyclopedia, but the list also includes entries that haven't even been released yet, not to mention some VERY old anime that modern fans wouldn't ever watch. But even so, do you know what 0.01% percent of that number is? Rounded down, it comes out to 1. According to your profile, only one anime in all existence is not complete garbage. Yet, you have 8 entries in your anime list which you have rated a 10, so at least 0.065% of anime is also Masterpiece material? And that's only out of what you've seen....

Sorry for the random comment, but your statement kind of bothered me from a statistical standpoint. Good day sir.

Yes yes, I get long winded sometimes. But it just bothered me. According to this guys list, he has actually seen at least part of less than 30 anime. That’s about 0.25% of the anime in existence. And out of what he has seen, he has only rated 24% of his entries below a 5. It just doesn't add up mathematically and it bothered me. Anyway, he then writes this on my profile in response:

i see that it bothered you.....it's obvious from your paragraph about my 99.99% thing.
i can't apologize for things i do or don't like. i also can't apologize if my 99.99% rating is an inacurate percentage . i see that we share some anime....some being the key word here. i also see that most everything i hate about anime is also in your favorites.

i don't think there is any reson to continue discussing anything further.

have a nice day

So this comment is the reason I'm even doing this blog post. He said he didn't think there was any reason for us to continue discussing anything, but it's just so dumb that I had to get it off my chest. If he didn't say that, I would have given him a counterargument on his profile, but he obviously doesn't want that so I'll just put it here. And I'll also go ahead and delete my comment from his profile and his comment off of mine after I post this. If he doesn't want to talk anymore, no reason for those comments to remain.

But yeah, I don't understand why he starts talking about "i can't apologize" and such. Did I sound like I wanted him to apologize?? I just wanted to point out that his comment was dumb. Oh, and it also bothers me that he has the statement "i am open minded" on his profile. Really?? He's easily one of the most close minded anime viewers I have ever come across. And also how he said, "i see that we share some anime....some being the key word here." Really?? Out of the stuff he's seen (29 entires), there are only 6 that I haven't seen yet (yet being the key word here). So I share 79% of his list. Yeah, we only share some anime.

But whatever. This guy is dumb and he'll probably never read this. Now time to go delete those comments and go on with my day. =P

Dez and I are doing our best to stay caught up with the Winter 2011 season of anime and catch up with everything we’ve fallen behind on, but it’s March now. April and the start of the Spring 2011 season is just around the corner! So a whole new set of anime is on the horizon for us to check out and decide what we’ll watch and what we’ll pass on. In the past couple of years it has seemed like there hasn’t been as much anime each season as before. But that is not the case with the Spring season. Anime has come back in full force! So here I am to make a list of all of the shows under consideration this season to take up our watching time. Now, this is a lot of anime, but it’s not even everything. I left out some things like sequels to stuff we haven’t seen and stuff we definitely won’t be interested in like Yu-Gi-Oh! and such. But anyway, here is the list:

30-sai no Hoken Taiiku
“Health Education for 30 years old men” is what this title translates to. Apparently it’s based on a guide book series for 30 year old virgins, teaching them how to date and have sex with women. It might be amusing. Reminds me of Futari Ecchi.

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai
Oh yay! A new show with a ridiculously long title!! Well, at least this series doesn’t have “brother” or “sister” in the title. Based on the picture and synopsis, it looks like it might actually be pretty good. It’s actually an original anime project.

Ao no Exorcist
This looks like it might actually be a pretty cool supernatural shounen action series. Not a Shounen Jump show this time so maybe it will hold my attention better than Beelzebub. =P

Appleseed XIII
Ahhh, I heard about the TV version of Appleseed years ago and it looks like it’s finally coming out! And I’m not really all that sure if I’m very excited about it anymore. It might be cool. Maybe Dez and I should watch the two movies before we give this a shot? I still haven’t watched Ex Machina yet myself.

C
So we have an anime with a super long title with AnoHana, and now we have a show with the shortest name possible! Just one letter. C. Although I guess it has a subtitle of “The Money of Soul and Possibility Control” so I don’t know. Looks like this might be a pretty cool and gritty sci-fi story. And it’s another original anime story.

Deadman Wonderland
I’ve read the first volume of the Deadman Wonderland manga so I’m looking forward to the anime version of this strange prison anime.

Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko
A new light novel based anime. A girl thinks she’s an alien. Don’t really know much else about it. Could be good.

Dog Days
Holy crap! Another original anime story! Not sure if this looks as promising as the other two on the list so far. Looks like a silly fantasy action thing. We’ll see, though.

Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera
This fantasy comedy it based on a really old manga (from the 1970’s!!) and it’s actually already had two anime adaptations. One done around the time of the original manga while the other was a much darker OVA just released in 2006-2007. This one looks like it’s closer to the manga like the 70’s anime, just with updated animation.

Hanasaku Iroha
Oh, looks like another original anime. A lot of them this season, huh? Well, this one is about girls working in a hot springs hotel and looks like it’s actually not going to be perverted at all. Interesting. Looks more like a calm slice of life coming of age kind of thing. Could be nice.

Lotte no Omocha!Rie Kugimiya has a second staring roll this season. This time she plays a ten year old succubus princess. I’m not as sure about this one as I am about Hidan no Aria, but it could be okay. We’ll see.

Moshidora
A baseball anime? Could be okay. Apparently it’s based on a single volume light novel series and the anime will just be 10 episodes long so it might be a nice little quick series that actually tells a complete story.

Nichijou
Another slice of life comedy, this time looking like it’s a little more on the wacky side of things. Hopefully it’s funny. There is also an OVA listed which comes out March 12. Says it’s an “Episode 0” so we’ll actually be able to get an early preview.

Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai
“Fall 2011 anime based on an adult game #2” ....okay, maybe I shouldn’t just write off the shows that are based on dating sims. We did like Fortune Arterial well enough, so who knows. I guess we can still try it out.

Sekaiichi Hatsukoi TV
This show looks like it will be pretty gay. Literally. I’m pretty sure we won’t be watching this. We only watched 2 episodes of Togainu no Chi before we dropped that. =P

Sengoku Otome: Momoiro Paradox
Another anime based on a series of pachinko machines? We didn’t give Rio a shot this season. Maybe we’ll try the first episode of this, but we probably won’t bother. Maybe see what the ANN preview for the season says about it?

Sket Dance
Another shounen anime, this time more of a school days kind of thing. I actually want to watch this for only one reason: Tomokazu Sugita plays one of the main characters! Ahhh, you’ll always be Kyon to me. ^_^

Sofuteni
And here we have a tennis anime! This one looks like it will be a little more comedy/slice of life based than the baseball anime. We’ll see how it turns out.

Steins;Gate
Here’s an anime that is based in the same world as Chaos;Head, an anime that I only checked out the first episode of back in my anime club days. I don’t know if you have to have seen that anime to understand what’s going on in this one, so we might just hold off on this for now. Maybe someday we’ll watch both shows? I don’t know. Looks like it could be interesting, though.

Tiger & Bunny
Just based on the picture on MAL, looks like a new stylish mecha show, maybe kind of like Star Driver, so it should be worth a shot. Oh, and it’s another original anime story!! That makes a total of five original anime stories this season!! Pretty good, huh?

Toriko (2011)
This looks manly, and crazy, probably retarded. A new Shounen Jump comedy. Again, considering that we weren’t very big on Beelzebub, this show probably doesn’t have a very good chance. But we may go ahead and check the first episode anyway. Maybe it can surprise us?

Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san.
An anime about a detective who summons devils to solve the troubles of his clients. Seems kind of interesting. There is actually an OVA for this that was released last month. I think I might have actually downloaded it, too. Just never got around to watching it.

X-Men
And then we have the new Marvel/Madhouse thing. Yeah, as I’ve said before, we probably won’t even bother. But who knows. Maybe we’ll give the first episode a shot.

And that’s it! So we have 31 shows to choose from?! Crap. Of course, some of them we won’t even try and a number of them probably won’t make the cut, but even if we like half of the shows, that’s a lot of anime to keep up with. Especially since we’re still trying to catch up on the current season and a few shows from last season. But I’m sure it will work out somehow. I’m looking forward to seeing some new stuff. ^_^

I'm a little bit late to the news, but according to ANN, Squid Girl is getting a new anime!!! Yay! We don't know when it will be coming out yet, but hopefully it won't be too long. Ika Musume was one of my favorite shows of the Fall 2010 season. A very fun little comedy that totally deserves more anime. I'll be looking forward to it and I know at least two other people (Dez and Dan) who will be just as happy to hear this news. ^_^

And in another piece of news, the Zero no Tsukaima light novel series is ending!! They're saying the 22nd and final volume is set to come out next year. Hopefully this will let a fourth and final anime season go into production. Zero no Tsukaima isn't my favorite light-novel-based anime by a long shot (Haruhi, Toradora, Bakemonogatari, Katanagatari, Shana, and Index all top it, probably among others), but it is a fun and enjoyable series and I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to sit down and actually read all 22 volumes of the series, plus the Tabitha side stories. It'd be nice to be able to just watch the ending someday.

And that is all. Just thought it was nice that there were two pieces of good news waiting for me this morning. Laters! ^_^

Today I got a package from Right Stuf. In addition to 9 volumes of manga, the box included two of the new Limited Edition Funimation sets: Black Butler Season One Part 1 and The Sacred Blacksmith. Now, just so you know, this is just my opinion of the packaging and nothing else. Out of the two series I've only seen Blacksmith (as it was airing in fansubs), so I can't even share an opinion on how good of an anime Black Butler is.

If you're unfamiliar with Funimation's new Limited Edition campaign, they're now putting out their releases with Limited Editions coming before the normal, usual release. The Limited Edition version comes with a quality box for the DVD/BD's and most of them also have some other little bonus to go with it. The Limited Editions are sold at $5 more retail price and when they're gone, they're gone! Anyway, here we go:

I'll go ahead and start off with Black Butler since I don't really have any major opinions on it. The release is pretty much just like the usual half-season sets that Funimation has been putting out lately, except that it includes a "sturdy" chipboard box instead of the usual flimsy-card packaging. It's still the same usual DVD thinpacks and it has a flimsy filler-box that you can take out and replace with the second half of the series after it comes out. No real physical extras with this purchase other than the box itself, which is okay with me. The box is very pretty and shinny. But sadly, I had one little problem. "Sturdy" is up there in quotes because my poor little DVD box got a little crushed somehow before it got into my hands! I mean, it's not totally destroyed, but the nice box is cracked in the top back end and is a little sunk in on the left side of the opening. It really sucks and the fact that the Limited Edition sold out for Funimation means that I probably couldn't get it replaced. But really, I probably wouldn't bother anyway. It's not in that bad of condition and it probably might have gotten cracked the next time I moved anyway.

So, on to the next box!! The Sacred Blacksmith luckily came to me in proper condition. But unfortunately, I don't like this release as much as I like Black Butler. Black Butler is a 24 episode series so the box is big enough to hold 4 thinpack DVD cases. Well, Blacksmith is a 12 episode series so the two DVD's that the box came with is all that's in the series. The problem? They still used the same 4-thinpack size box! So the stupid flimsy little filer-box that takes up the other half of the nice chipboard box is there to stay. Pretty lame. Now the box itself, it looks great. It's nice and sturdy, didn't break before it got to me, and it has some nice clean artwork on it. It also came with a little 32 page artbook. It's alright. It has some nice illustrations in the beginning which look like they were done by the original novel's artist. After that comes the original Japanese anime cover artworks for the DVD/BD release over there. Then there is this small double-sided centerfold poster in the middle with Lisa on one side and then a super fan service version of Cecily. After the centerfold there are a few anime screenshot pages and then more fan service! Kind of weird that they used such a fan service angle with the artbook since the actual series isn't overly fan service-like. But I guess sex sells and Funimation tends to be pretty good at exploiting that. About half of them I've seen from the pages of Megami magazine, so not really anything new, and they're so much smaller. In the end, I think I regret getting the Limited Edition in this case. The stupid filler box really annoys me and the artbook isn't really that great in my opinion. Others who might enjoy the fan service pictures more fully and might not be bothered by the filler box thing, I'd say it would be worth it. But for me, not really. Maybe if the artbook was better, had a bunch of character designs, weapon designs, background designs, interviews, or something more and if it was actually a nice hardcover book that took up the entire filler box space instead of having the stupid filler box, I think I'd like this a lot more. Instead the artbook is a thin stapled together thing with a little bit of good art which I ended up just putting inside of the stupid filler box. Lame.

So yeah, in the end, pretty disappointing. The Limited Edition that I was really looking forward to ended up being underwhelming and the one that ended up actually being okay ended up being kind of broken. Oh well. Hopefully Ga-Rei Zero's Limited Edition release (which I have pre-ordered) will be better or I might have to give up on Funimation's cool new little gimmick. Laters!

Yesterday on ANN they had a news post about a promo for Hidan no Aria, a new anime starting in April. And it revealed the voice actors for the two main characters: Aria will be played by Rie Kugimiya and Kinji will be played by Junji Majima!! This reunites the voice actors of the two main characters from my third favorite anime (Taiga and Ryuuji from Toradora!). Pretty cool. I'm really looking forward to this series now. :)

But yeah, I think it's pretty funny when this kind of thing happens. It's the same thing that happened with Shana and Zero no Tsukaima, except the male character was played by a different guy in those (Satoshi Hino), but that was also Rie Kugimiya. This season Rie and Junji also have staring roles, but they're in different series. As I mentioned in my last post, Rie plays Rose in Dragon Crisis! and Junji plays Aikawa in Zombie.

Oh, and you know what else?? All six of these shows mentioned were based on light novel series! I'm kind of surprised that Rie isn't playing Haruna in the Zombie anime. It's like if someone's making an anime that includes a bad-ass petite girl as a main character, they get Rie Kugimiya on speed dial!! XD